Stripped
by all.I.want.to.do.is.fly
Summary: "Big man in a suit of armor...take that away and what are you?"Maybe it was time to figure out the answer. Avengers Movie-verse. Snippets from the lives of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers.
1. Stripped

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: Spoilers for the US Avengers trailer and Iron Man 2.

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><p>"<em>Big man in a suit of armor…take that away and what are you?"<em>

Tony wasn't completely sure why he was still thinking about the conversation hours after he should have pushed it from his mind. It was a variation of a statement he had been asked many times over the years by reporters and he had always responded in his usual sarcastic, joking fashion.

"_Um…let's see. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."_

But his casual brush-off hadn't lessened the sting of the question that time. Tony Stark was used to having his judgment questioned, to being the object of gossip and on occasion ridicule. However, it had been a long time since he had last been made to feel like a failure.

He admired Steve Rogers as a kid. He listened to his dad talk about the scrawny boy who became the legendary Captain America and was inspired to work harder, to be better, until he wasn't just the son of Howard Stark. He was Anthony Stark, the man who could create virtually anything, practically a superhero in his own right through sheer talent.

Iron Man just made it more real, giving him the physical power to save the world.

So now he was finally able to meet his childhood hero and the man looked at him as if he could see right through him. He felt vulnerable and ashamed, stripped bare as if all his faults were written across his face and his accomplishments meant nothing.

It reminded him of his father.

He hated it.

_Iron Man: Yes. Tony Stark: Not recommended._

"_Take that away and what are you?"_

He's a man. A man who has many faults and has made a lot of mistakes in his life. He's human. But that doesn't make him less of a hero.

It's about time Captain America, Director Fury, and everyone else started to see that.

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	2. Battlefield

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: Spoilers for the movie. I've decided to combine Tony and Steve's perspectives on both the scene this story is based off of and the movie in general.

Summary for this chapter: Steve Rogers is a man out of time. He went to sleep in a war and woke up only to be asked to fight in another one. He was a soldier. The perfect soldier. But all he wants now is to get away from the battlefield and Tony Stark certainly isn't helping.

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><p>Steve Rogers was a man out of his time. The last thing he remembered before waking up in an unfamiliar room was the cold steel of the plane controls against his hands as he braced himself for impact. He went to sleep in a war and woke up nearly seventy years later only to be asked to fight in another one. It made no difference to him that one was against the Nazis and the other a power-hungry god from another world. It was still a war and all he could think of was the battlefield.<p>

They won the battle, Captain America and his new team of "Avengers." Yet, he knew there would be others soon enough. It didn't matter that people were fighting amongst themselves a little less than in the 1940's. Now there were new fights with super villains who had technology not all that different than what Hydra had been using. The fact that SHIELD had been trying to use the tesseract to imitate those kinds of weapons…he wasn't really sure how he was supposed to feel about that.

It wasn't that Steve wasn't trying to acclimate to the future. But it was made awfully difficult when he couldn't close his eyes without seeing Bucky fall down a mountainside or Schmidt's sneering red skull. His dreams were memories and every time he woke he was reminded that he was here in this place with its skyscrapers and nuclear weapons and everything in between. So he didn't sleep much, choosing instead to destroy punching bags in the SHIELD headquarters.

He wondered if maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the dreams were his only reminders, but that wasn't an option when he was faced with Tony Stark on an almost daily basis. Their first meeting had been…tense to say the least. He could admit that a significant part of that was his fault.

Steve had been told about Tony Stark, had read a file and been shown video clips. But nothing could have prepared him for meeting the man in person. It baffled him that someone who looked so much like Howard could be so different. The genius was the same, of course it was. The man was essentially a symbol of the future with all his inventions. The arrogance however was something else, something that almost reminded him of Bucky. So he was harsh and judgmental, lashing out whenever he could and naturally, Stark responded in kind.

He was surprised though, by the extent of exactly how wrong he had been about Tony Stark. He had accused him of only looking out for himself, of being nothing without a suit of armor that he couldn't begin to understand the mechanics behind. And yet, it had been Stark who almost died to save the world, carrying a missile on his back and into another dimension. Cutting the wire might be a way out, but Steve had forgotten that sometimes cutting it could be as dangerous as laying down over it.

One thing was for certain; Steve owed him an apology. It wouldn't be right away though. Steve needed time to get his head on straight, to stop picking fights simply because the battlefield was the only place he felt comfortable. He needed to learn to live in the future regardless of the fact that he craved the past. Perhaps Tony Stark would be the one to help him with that. They would have to see.

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	3. Apologies

"_Sir. Captain Rogers is here to see you."_

It had been almost a week since The Avengers had stopped Loki's attack on New York City. After being debriefed about the fight, Tony had returned to what was left of Stark Tower and began to rebuild. He hadn't been in touch with any of the other Avengers since then, so it was a surprise to have Captain America turn up on his doorstep.

Tony wasn't entirely sure why the good Captain was there, but he certainly wanted to find out. If anything, this would give him the chance to show him some of the designs he had been working on for his shield and uniform.

"Captain."

"Mr. Stark. May I come in?"

"Of course," Tony replied.

Steve stepped inside, his eyes taking in the space. It may not have been as impressive as SHIELD's flying fortress, but the Stark Tower was certainly something to behold.

"So, what brings you here?" Tony asked, shutting the door behind him. "Did we have a mission SHIELD forgot to tell me about or…"

Steve cut him off.

"No. No mission. I…wanted to apologize."

Tony's eyebrows rose in surprise. He gestured for him to continue.

"I don't know you, Mr. Stark. And I made a lot of assumptions about you that I shouldn't have. What you did the other day with that missile…"

He trailed off, eyes glancing up to meet Tony's. "I misjudged you and I was wrong to say the things I did. So, I'm sorry."

Steve looked so sincere, it was impossible for Tony to think of anything to say except, "Thank you. But, you know, you're not the only one who said some things they probably shouldn't have. I'm…sorry as well."

The words felt strange and unfamiliar rolling off his tongue. He wondered if Steve understood that apologies weren't really something that he did. But, he felt he needed to say it in this case. Steve had touched a few nerves with some of his statements, but he couldn't have known the effect they would have and calling him a lab experiment…was probably a bit extreme.

"Thank you, Mr. Stark. I appreciate that," Steve said, drawing Tony out of his reverie.

"Mr. Stark was my father, Captain. Please, call me Tony," he replied.

Tony could see a flicker of emotion pass over the other man's face at the reference to Howard, but it was gone so quickly he almost could have imagined it.

"Only if you call me Steve."

Tony smiled.

"Do you have anywhere to be? Because I've been working on some additions to the Captain America uniform if you're interested in seeing the lab."

"Uh…no. Nowhere to be. I'd be glad to see it."

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the basement, Tony showing Steve his new designs and teaching him some basic computer skills. When he left that night, Tony sent him off with a new tablet (because honestly, he doubted SHIELD gave him any good tech to play with). They still weren't friends, but it was a better start then they had before. And just maybe, in time, they would get there.

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	4. Conversations

It had been about 5 months since Steve had come by Stark Tower to apologize and since then, he and Tony had fallen into a mostly comfortable friendship. For a long time though there were some things they simply didn't talk about. Howard Stark was one of those things.

It was hard for Steve to reconcile his own memories of Howard with the less than positive light Tony saw him in. Even though they never talked about him directly, there were certain comments Tony had made that made it clear his childhood had been less than ideal. Steve was starting to understand why his comparisons when they had first met were met with hostility.

When they finally did have a conversation about the late Howard Stark, Steve was left with desire to punch his old friend in the face, loyalty be damned.

On the night in question, Tony had been drunk. It was far less of a usual occurrence since he had been brought in as a member of the Avengers. It wasn't until Steve had asked Pepper what was wrong that he had been told it was the anniversary of the deaths of Tony's parents. He decided to spend the rest of the night at Stark Tower to make sure Tony didn't do anything reckless.

The conversation had started in the workshop.

"He called me his greatest creation. That was the closest thing to a compliment he ever bothered to give me and that didn't happen until after he'd been dead for almost 20 years."

Steve hadn't had anything to say in response to that so instead he just listened. He listened as Tony detailed the finer points of his life, building robots instead of making friends because he didn't know who to trust, graduating college at 17, all the way up through his kidnapping in Afghanistan and the birth of Iron Man.

Somewhere between creating a new element and being told about the Avengers Initiative, Tony fell asleep and Steve was left with his thoughts. He realized that it really didn't matter how many times you read someone's personnel file, there were things that couldn't be understood without hearing them from the source.

Steve had long since figured out that Tony Stark was multi-faceted, but in the wake of the new information he had been given, he was amazed that Tony had turned out to be such a good man. He had known a lot of exceptional soldiers that would have been crushed under the weight of Tony's experiences.

He figured they probably wouldn't ever talk about this conversation, had known that Tony likely wouldn't even remember it in the morning, but he was glad it had happened. To Steve, it indicated that, regardless of the circumstance, Tony trusted him with information that few people probably knew and he reciprocated in kind.

It became one of their things, that they could talk about almost anything and trust it would be kept in the strictest of confidences. Steve told Tony about Bucky, about the war, growing up in Brooklyn. He told him about the battlefield and Tony did his best to help him adapt to the future.

Sure, Tony was still Tony. He would probably always be a (slightly) narcissistic genius who used words as arrows and put on a front for most of the world, but he was fiercely loyal to his circle of friends and somehow Steve had found himself among them.

Maybe the future wasn't so bad.

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	5. Teachings and Revelations

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: This is the last chapter. Thank you all for reading!

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><p>Somewhere along the line, Tony became Steve's unofficial teacher for all things past and present. Tony, with some help from Jarvis, took to the role quite enthusiastically. First there were the outings. Tony would show up at Steve's SHIELD-gifted apartment at random times and drag him off to a museum or back to Stark Tower because there were things that Steve "absolutely had to see and what was SHIELD doing anyway? Giving him pamphlets?"<p>

The first place Tony took him was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tony was bored out of his mind, but it was worth it to see Steve's face light up at each new piece. He remembered his father saying that Steve had been something of an artist himself, so after that day, he arranged for a shipment of every conceivable art supply to be sent to Steve. He thought he'd done a fairly decent job of covering his tracks, but Steve figured out where the gift had come from anyway.

Telling Steve about the many wars America had been in over the years was a little more difficult for him, especially because it forced him to reflect on the role Stark Industries had played in the conflicts. Tony knew he had a lot of blood on his hands, so much that he wasn't sure it could ever be completely washed away. Surprisingly, Steve didn't seem to care about that.

Teaching the good Captain about music was probably Tony's favorite part of the job. He asked Jarvis to compile a list of songs from every decade since Steve's plunge into the ice and put it on the tablet he had given him. He found that Steve's tastes in music were far less old-fashioned than he expected. Steve loved classical music, apparently he always had, and jazz, but he also enjoyed a lot of more modern artists including some of Tony's favorites.

(Of course, the desire to introduce him to new tunes didn't stop Tony from requesting that Jarvis play "Star Spangled Man" every time Steve walked into a room, but that was beside the point.)

Tony knew they had an interesting friendship. It was very different to the rest of the relationships in his life. Steve challenged him in a way that had originally irritated him but eventually made him a better man. On the other side, Tony brought Steve out of the past and helped him to really live in the future. They made a good team.

It had taken Tony a lot of time and thought to adjust to working on a team, but at the end of the day he couldn't imagine not being an Avenger. Maybe he was still a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, but he was also a hero, suit or no suit. And even if Steve had been one of the first people to call that into question, he was also the one who had made Tony believe it was true.

There were still times when he didn't quite see himself as a hero, when he was just a man trying to make up for past mistakes. But Steve was a hero, and if he believed Tony was as well, he couldn't really argue with that.

One thing was for sure though. Neither one of them was half as good without the other. Tony was glad they'd finally figured that out.

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